What Your Dollars Can Do

At Starlight, we say that just $1 can deliver happiness to a child in the hospital. But what exactly does that mean?  

Our mission is rooted in the fact that happy kids heal faster. In addition to receiving quality medical care, a child’s emotional and mental health significantly affects recovery—feeling anxious, lonely, and afraid takes a toll on a child’s well-being, resulting in a more difficult road to recovery.  

The impact of a smile can completely transform the hospital experience for a seriously ill kid. That’s why all of Starlight’s programs have been uniquely designed and developed to create moments that help reduce those feelings of fear and anxiety while offering familiar experiences that help a child feel a sense of normalcy and comfort.  

So, how can $1 create this experience?  

We define your donation’s impact by the individual moments of happiness it delivers. All of our core programs are designed to be sustainable, multi-use, and high-impact resources for hospitals supporting seriously ill and injured kids. We did the math and found that just $1 helps one child smile during their hospital journey through these programs! With every dollar donated, you ensure that those moments of happiness reach even more children across the country. 

Take a look at these examples to see how your donation can deliver happiness through Starlight programs: 

• The moment a child has to put on a hospital gown can be scary and anxiety-inducing – but that moment is transformed when they can choose an extra soft gown with ties down the side, featuring bright colors or their favorite character! When a child requires multiple surgeries, lengthy treatments, and lots of follow up appointments, they can wear their washable Starlight Gown through every single visit. Just $40 can provide one of these gowns and completely change one of the most vulnerable experiences in a child’s hospital journey.  

• A Starlight Nintendo Gaming Station can be built and placed for $5,000, which includes a lifetime warranty and tech support. These Gaming Stations meet hospital’s infection protocols which allows them to be used by a high number of kids in a single day, so their lasting impact is profound! During longer treatments like infusions, transfusions or chemotherapy, video games help keep a child entertained and distracted. A donation of just $15 can provide an hour of game play to 15 hospitalized kids through Starlight Gaming! 

• Starlight Deliveries offer our hospital partners a free online platform to order items directly from our inventory of toys, books, games, crafting materials, and other urgently needed products donated by our generous partners. A $25 donation helps ship a pallet of items to hospitals across the country—that means that even a $1 donation helps one toy reach a seriously ill child! 

Starlight relies on the generosity of individual donors to do this important work. We are committed to being transparent about your impact and communicating regularly about how your dollars are being used to help deliver happiness to seriously ill kids.